"Would you like to share my breakfast?"

::hugs:: you are most awesome

Thank you for that wonderful post.

You are made of win, and so is this story. I love you a lot.

Beautiful story. :) Thank you for sharing.

now my eyes are all leaky

Yay for you and Dave and Daisy and the cascading effect of GoodStuff. :-)

This reminds me so much of about ten thousand incidents in my college years. It also reminds me of why I adore you, and always will.

I had this post all typed out once before and then Panera ATE IT.

This story made me happy. It also made me sad. It made me happy because I like to see my stubborn belief that humans are decent people most of the time when you give them the chance to be. It made me sad because I don't know if I would have done what you did. I might have once. I don't know if I could now.

Much of this is a result of having lived in one of the most dangerous cities in the country while I attended grad school. It was a very good school and they gave me a good scholarship, which I really needed, and I am glad I went there, as they have continued to try and do right by me in this awful economy.

But it meant I was surrounded, all day, every day, by absolutely CRUSHING poverty. I was in a city where the good part of town meant people might venture out into the streets during daylight but still hid behind barred doors after five PM. And we were conditioned to be very cautious. As in "Don't ever give money to panhandlers because you could end up getting jumped if people see you have money." So I learned not to carry money with me. I walked through the city with my earbuds in even though my ipod was off (so I could hear trouble; this actually spared me some grief once when I nearly ended up in the middle of a gang fight for being in the wrong place at the wrong time) because then nobody tried to talk to me. I kept my eyes where my feet were going and I didn't go out alone, or at night, unless I'd called the campus police for an escort.

It wasn't until after I left that I realized the only students I ever heard of getting mugged were the ones who went out looking for drugs (cars getting broken into was another story.)

I did try to help. I was a DV advocate. I helped raise money and supplies for the soup kitchens. I taught for a semester at a city high school. I sat on panels and advocated for the school getting more involved in the community where we were (the locals called us "The Fortress.") rather than trying to pretend it was in neighboring Philadelphia.

But I had a friend who did all I did, and still walked unafraid through the city, and bought people coffee, and talked to them, and got to know them, and was sometimes therefore able to help them. He never had a problem all three years he lived there. Granted, he'd worked in economic development before, so he was used to being in bad cities in developing countries. He'd lost a lot of his fear. But he hadn't hardened his heart, and somewhere down the line, I had.

Thank you very much for posting about what you wish you'd done in years past; I'm right there with you. It took too long for me, too, to give up that kind of fear.

It's very sad that, where I live, people who obviously keep themselves in fine walking shape will pay ten extra dollars a day to park two blocks closer to their offices, just so they won't have to risk interaction with panhandlers.

Aaaaaaaaaaaand I'm teary-eyed now. Wonderful entry.

Thank you. Stories like these are good reminders.

^_^ What a lovely story. That will continue to cheer me up for many days. Thanks for sharing that with us!

Okay, now in addition to buying your books because they are awesome, I must buy your books because you are awesome. Not that it's a bother or anything.

I came here from metaquotes to tell you thank you for making my day a whole lot brighter.

I was feeling pretty gloomy and despondent (did really badly at exams) and seeing your entry metaquoted cheered me up.

Best thing I have heard all day.

That's awesome.

Little story of my own you may like:

A couple of weeks ago, some young teenagers from a couple of streets away decided it would be fun to take down my washing line - or one end of it - and use it as a giant skipping rope, thereby stripping most of it in the process (it was metal-core). They also bent the metal of my fence. When I caught them, they ran away, and because my short-term memory is horrendous, I couldn't do much about identifying them, just remember where they went. (To add to this little history, I'm disabled and had a very difficult time putting up said washing line in the first place.)

Yesterday, the kids who live in the street that runs at a right angle to my little block of flats came into my building's shared garden - I let them play in it during summer so long as they behave fairly well, since they don't have much in the way of gardens themselves - and put up a new washing line for me. Completely unprompted by me. I think the eldest girl, who's about eight, told her mother what had happened, else I don't know where they'd have got the line from, but it was really lovely of them to do that.

You are wonderful

You've "done some good," as Kevin Costner in The Untouchables would say.

You give me hope for humanity on a regular basis. Thank you for being a source of wonder, inspiration, and entertainment since the day I stumbled across your journal. You, my virtual friend, make the world a better place just by being you and being brave enough to share what you write with the universe.

When I was in Stratford on Avon a couple of years ago, getting a fix of the Bard, I went into McD's for a pre-show coffee. A bunch of young people visiting the town on a school trip piled in with bag lunches from their hotel, which they abandoned in favour of burgers ...

One of the staff quietly rounded up the bag lunches once the young people had left and passed them on to homeless man who's often outside McD's.

I know it was an individual act, but it realy raised my impressions of McD's :-)

The coffee and the play (The Merchant of Venice, Royal Shakespeare Company)were pretty good too!

That is very wonderful.

Every time I start to think humans are shite, someone surprises me.